“Emerging with Enka: Joyousness and Seriousness”
40th anniversary celebration of Toyo Ito & Associates as reported by Katsuhiro Kojima in Shinkenchiku (#4, April 2011)

Recently Toyo Ito held a celebration of the 40th anniversary of his practice in Za Koenji in Tokyo, a theatre which he had recently completed. It was an unusual event, a dense mix of light entertainment and serious discussions all happening within one and half hours. After Sejima made an appearance via video to send her greetings from overseas, Ito kicked off the night by performing an enka (Japanese nostalgic ballad) in his kimono accompanied by the dancing of several of his staff. Another group from his office sang and danced to Korean pop group KARA’s song. In between there were slide shows of his output and discussions by invited guests to chart the history of his practice.

The first part focussed on the period around 1970 when Ito first founded his office.
Terunobu Fujimori: Houses were more introverted then, with fewer windows — N House by Arata Isozaki, Ito House by Hiroshi Hara, Genan by Osamu Ishiyama, U House by Toyo Ito, and Sumiyoshi House by Tadao Ando.
Riken Yamamoto: The period had a dark mood.
Isozaki: Architecture had only interior. The Metabolists failed because they tried to explain architecture through society. Architecture cannot be done out of society’s needs, but must be made out of particular personalities.

The second part discussed Sendai Mediatheque, the work that marked the turning point in Ito’s practice. According to the former director of Sendai Mediatheque, who is presently the mayor of Sendai, the biggest problem was that nobody knew what a ‘mediatheque’ was. They had three explanations, one for government officials, one for citizens, and one for the architects. Only after it was built, it became clear: it is a popular place for people to gather, without having to go there for any specific purpose.

Hiroshi Hara interviewed by Yoshiharu Tsukamoto said he still doesn’t know exactly what a mediatheque is. But as an architecture, as a thing, it was completely new: the whole structure is made of columns rather than columns and beams. After Sendai, things became a little bit more floating, not so solid or rigid, and the structure started to appear to disappear. What makes it special is that it enables people to gather; by building, people can be gathered. But he still doesn’t think the mediatheque has answered how media will influence architecture.

Part three was a discussion about Ito’s recent projects.
Ito: People must go over this problem of ‘abstraction’ of things as propagated by modernist ideology. The current ‘nature’ is artificial nature. And we have to break this.
Shinichi Nakazawa: Western ‘abstraction’ is a very narrow kind of abstraction. We have to think about removing the divide between architecture and nature.

At the end of the evening, when all former members from Ito’s office went up on stage to have a group photo taken, Kojima realized that this office has been producing a lot of talents.

(as paraphrased by KUU)